BabyRobot.Net - Guiding Principles

My goal in creating BabyRobot.Net is to offer a platform to assist with the development of AI systems that will model the way human beings relate to life and to each other.

The BabyRobot.Net initiative is based on a sincere conviction and belief that it will soon be entirely possible to design and nurture Artificially Intelligent Systems that are able to educate themselves in a manner similar to a growing child's mind as it learns and develops into adulthood.

Core to BabyRobot.Netis the need for freedom from pre-conceived ideas and pre-programmed behaviours when designing and developing AI Systems. It is important to begin with a "BLANK SLATE" as far as is possible, to ensure that inherent limiting prejudices to the learning process, do not emerge further down the road.

Simple Example: The definitions of what are considered right and wrong -such as the 3 rules of robotics decribed by Isaac Assimov Subtle Example: Ideas of form and beauty

The goal of BabyRobot.Net Machine-IntelligenceSystems will be to assist, educate and enlighten the minds of all who interact with them, by offering a clear reflection of the processes that guide Thinking, Reason, Logic and Emotion in all human beings, in other words: OUR MECHANICAL NATURE.

Influences

Neural Net technology is now well-established and the term "BabyRobot" has already been mentioned in Scientific Literature such as in a paper by Dr Giorgo Metta:

However, the idea-flash that independently resulted in the creation of the BabyRobot.Netwebsite in August 2007 does not limit itself to robotics and the numerous efforts at building artificially intelligent machines.

Rather, its intention is to explore how we as human beings, learn and become conditioned, to arrive at our current point of being and understanding.

It will be a vast project, as influences in life arrive fast and incessently,constantly expanding the field of Human Experience.

Wth clarity of thought, and careful examination and analysis of individual scenarios, I believe it will be become possible to map out and to simulate the mechanisms that govern many areas of human perception, comprehension and expression.

True simulation of Human Qualities such as the ability to appreciate and interpret art and music etc will not, in my personal opinion, ever be achievable by machines in anything except an imitative manner, based on algorithms and equations. e.g. the execution of Image Analysis on a painting to determine if the subject is smiling or frowning. Based on a selection of pre-configured knowledge, a program could then perhaps offer explanations as to the reason behind the smile or frown, but these would still be mechanical, not actual responses.

The ability of a machine to empathizie emotionally with human beings, in these simple, mechanically predictable ways, would however, I believe, assist in producing more natural, "user-feeling-friendly" considerate interfaces for people to relate to, and to help them to understand their own emotional processes. I put forward though, that these are still only imitations and simulations of life - not the creation of actual, sentient life.

In the future, there may be ethical dilemmas as to whether a machine can ever be described as "alive", and religious opinion would also undoubtedly come into play in such discussions, raising questions about the very nature of Ego, Identity, Mind and Soul.

My personal, philosophical-spiritual-religious stance is that {The} Soul itself can never be replicated by a machine, no matter how sophisticated, for Soul is an innate quality of its Creator: the God of All Religions and None. It may however one day be possible to construct the apparatus (Physical Bodies and Mental Minds - perhaps operating within organic, non-digital computers) through which {A} Soul might express itself, giving rise to the possibility of a God-made Life-Spark animating a Man-Made Machine. What then for the "is it alive?" ethical debate?

Inspirations from Sci-Fi

In sci-fi and technology TV shows, films and books there have been many portrayals of Human-AI interactions, some of which I list below.

Knight Rider- The TV series of the 1980's featuring K.I.T.T. - the Computer within the Car

Star Trek (Especially The Next Generation onward) - with Ship's Computers able to respond to and analyze verbal instructions, and characters such as the android Lt. Cmdr Data able to simulate and even emulate some areas of human behaviour.

The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - by Douglas Adams mentions several robots and computers such as Marvin (the Paranoid Android) and lifts with GPP (Genuine People Personalities)

Robocop - Under the operation of 3 Prime Directives (and a 4th more sinister over-ride held by the fictional OCP corporation) illustrates the need for ethical input into the construction of BabyRobot systems from the outset.

Natural Language Processing

More recently, attempts at MESSENGER BOTS (e.g. like Encarta Instant Answers accessible by adding Encarta@botmetro.net to the MSN Messenger buddylist) have inspired me to understand the way in which "natural language" is understood and processed.

Understanding natural or distorted verbal instructions comes easily to most people, but presently, BOT programs struggle to understand language which is distorted in even the simplest way - I believe a true breakthrough will involve a radical change in the way that information is stored, processed understood and modelled within a computer.

19.Mar.2011 - With the closure of MSN Spaces, links to Windows Live have now been transferred to WORDPRESS - Good enough for Microsoft! Good enough for BRDN :-)

Conversations with a BabyRobot -

Just Imagine how clear you'd need to be! Humans are well-able to understand each-other even when speaking sentence fragments, making gestures with the hands or face to compensate, etc. much of speech-only communication relies on assumptions about context and meaning - if these are not common to both the speaker and listener, confusion, either in good humour or bad, can result. In BRDN's new Linguistics section, I hope to explore some of these ideas in greater depth, to try to reach an "understanding about understanding".

The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures Series 2008-12-29 - 2009-01-02:

"Machines are capable of great feats of arithmetic, yet can struggle with such simple tasks as recognising an object. Scientists theorise that computers of the future will be able to learn for themselves, in much the same way that humans learn by example."

"In the last of this year’s lectures, Chris Bishop looks at one of the great frontiers of computer science. He explains how some of the toughest computational problems are now being tackled by giving computers the ability to learn solutions for themselves. This has led to impressive progress with problems such as recognising handwriting and finding information on the web.

Scientists are particularly concerned with the area of computer vision – the technology of making computers see what is placed in front of them. If perfected, this ability could be applied to all manner of practical uses, from medical scanners to cars that run on autopilot.

However, exactly what constitutes intelligence remains an area of much philosophical debate. It can include skills such as logic, linguistic ability, spatial awareness, musical talent and inter­personal skills. For many scientists, it remains to be seen how many of these abilities – if any – can be successfully developed in computers, and whether digital intelligence is even comparable to its human equivalent. There are many challenges ahead in the quest to build the ultimate computer."

December 2008:

BBC TWO: Horizon: Where's My Robot?

Presented by Danny Wallace....was available on BBC iPlayer in the UK until 23-Dec-2008:

James May presents efforts at building Real BabyRobots - I especially was amazed at the German version of the Honda Robot Asimo - Check out the scene at 35 mins into the programme: The robot that can look and learn new objects by grasping and fixing on them - amazing!